Monday, December 07, 2015

My first new video in a while and a hint of things to come. This is a test shooting the C300 Mk II in low light, higher ISO and using Rec 709. My main reason for doing that was the already flat lighting where shooting C log would of just been loosing info rather than any potentinal savings or gain. Check it out.

Saturday, January 04, 2014

Just when computer started handling 1080 HD like they used to handle SD, here comes 4K to mess it all up. Ok, if you have a machine made in the last 2 years or so it'll probably muddle through 1 or 2 streams of 4K all right. However it probably won't do so great with several. I know, we aren't always doing several layers of live video, but sometimes you do. Sure you can play 1 4K stream ok, even through on maybe one color corrector or scale / position and you get through it. That may be good enough for a while but eventually like in the start of the HD era you'll want better performance. Some how the newest machines with massive internal bandwidth to push the image data around are going to matter. However, I think you could easily stretch out at least a year before needing to take the plunge.

Wait, what did I just say ? Yes I think 4K is going to get shoved down everyone's throats and you'll have to do it. Consumer demand for HD started slow but then took off at a pretty steady rate to where we see 70-80% of the viewing market now has at least one HD set in their home, or computer screen. While 3D surfaces every decade or so and tries to become the standard but flops ever so badly, 4K is different. Its the next HD and it will come because it will. Its going to have far more marketing behind it because bigger is always more marketable. 4K panels are already out with prices that are acceptable to mid or upper end consumers. If you are going to spend $800-$1200 on a new set, will you buy a 1080 or 4K set for the same money ? in CONSUMER land the answer is 4K because, well its better, right ?

As a pro, you'd look at other things like contrast ratio, 6bit vs 8 bit vs 10 bit panel, color profile and adjustment, local LED dimming, and other features that mean a better more accurate picture over just the shear number of them. Another words you are looking at the quality of the pixels ! most consumers aren't outside of the stupid worries about refresh rate which is mostly bogus past 60hz, certainly past 120hz where a pixel can turn on or off in 1/2 a frame refresh so there should never be lag.

Let me also say, I've seen native 4K and its amazing. I've also seen 8K which makes 1080 look like SD. There are days when 1080 just isn't enough for me, it looks a bit soft and lacking detail at times. This is especially true when you start to get closer to the screen.

What this means quite simply is this : if the material you are shooting has any future value or life, say 5 years from now then 4K is something you need to get serious about now. Start figuring out what work you are doing or expect to be doing this year for which 4K will have future value. Nearly 10 years ago I saw HD coming the way it was. While many productions where shooting SD I was selling HD. My marketing was simple - is what we are shooting now going to have future value ? In almost all cases it did and I still pull shots from those shoots back then on occasion when I need them. While I decided on 720 back then, they scale up into 1080 just fine now with PP's high quality scaling. I made the 720 choice back then for a number of reasons : almost all HD sets where in fact about 720 in resolution, it looked great in SD deliverables, my G5 mac tower easily was able to edit it - 1080 was kinda of chunky at that time, storage requirements weren't as high, it was just easier to handle all around. Another factor was that the first affordable HD cameras at that point were also 720 - HVX-200's, JVC HD100/200/250's. I jumped on the JVC HD-100, shot a lot of great material with it and switched over to dslr's a few years ago. Its funny how I looked at the dslr material vs the JVC and saw the dslr material looked better, but now I do the same thing with my C100 vs everything else past.

So my words of wisdom are : don't ignore 4K. Its coming, plan for it, find clients and projects for which its appropriate and get into it in a carefully planned way that doesn't leave you broke ! Also know when HD is just fine. Don't just go and sell 4K because you have a camera that can. The back end of editing / storing / achieving is very significant. Its also fair to say that 99.9% of the projects viewers will never see it in 4K for now, but maybe in 5 years they will. Take that into consideration as well if the project you are doing has a shelf life of a year, you don't need 4K for that ! Be wise, smart, careful !

Friday, December 21, 2012

Before I finish for a long holiday weekend I wanted to share a little present with everyone. Its a sample of the new h.265 encoding that coming soon to a device near you. Watch the youtube sample in 1080 and even with YT's h.264 playback the differences are clear. This codec improvement is what we need if 4K is going to become the norm for production and at least limited consumer delivery. H.265 is based off of h.264 so many h.264 capable devices like the iPad can handle it. This translates into better 1080 in fewer bits than h.264 currently does, or better image quality at the same bit rate. Good news for net delivery of video from services like Netflix and Hulu.

Have a great weekend whether or not you may be celebrating xmas. If not, how about just taking a nice break for the winter solstice and enjoying the company of people you like and care about.

Monday, June 25, 2012

So last week I spent a good part of my time shooting with a AF100. First time. Impressions ? Yawn. More shallow DoF than a 2/3" video cam, but no where near a S35 / APS-C never mind full frame dslr. I had a Nikon 14-28 2.8 on the camera pretty much most of the time except for some interviews. Focus was easy - infinity, 10ft, 5ft, 2.5ft. It was pretty easy even wide open to zone focus just like back in the day when I did this wtih 2 1/4 roll fim @ F8. Now that could have shallow DoF ! The AF100 was far more video camera like than 35mm like by a margin. Of course easy focus isn't a bad thing when you are moving fast shooting news / doc type content.

What I will say is it is sharper than my 60D for sure... but its also not the same look either. Backgrounds tended to be sharper, and overall the image was sharper with out any moire or aliasing.

Given how cheap AF100's are on the used market, one could be easy to pick one up as a B cam to a dslr / S35 size camera.

Having onboard audio was nice too - XLR's to take my mixer feed ! Built in ND was really nice since I didn't need to have a matte box rig just to slap some ND in front of the lens so I wasn't at F11 all day. Gain was good, dedicated WB button was good. Outside that was ISO 200 with a quick bump up to 800 ro 1250. The VF LCD was crap, the external LCD was only slightly better. All the time I was just going crazy for a 5X zoom button for critical focus check... but alas I it was my worry for nothing because this is far more like a regular video camera than 35mm camera. With peaking turned on, its pretty easy to see if you're in or out.

Dynamic range is ok and in line with other cameras out there. Shooting it next to a HPX500 and 60D is was making images that were in line. Color also was a reasonable match to the other cameras as well.

Way cool feature : Waveform and vectorscope. While a vector scope wasn't much for me, flipping on the waveform monitor was very useful. It took all guessing out of wondering if you where getting good exposure and should be something all cameras do going forwards.

The nice thing about this camera is that it uses SD card rather than the very expensice P2 cards. In fact it looks like Panasonic did some last minute redesign of the camera from P2 to SD cards. 2 32G SD cards are plenty of shooting time. The good stuff said, it does use a MXF style folder structure to make your life miserable. Its stupid and the camera should just make self contained QT spec MOV's like canon cameras and many consumer cameras do.

Overall nice camera, good starter camera, not bad for news / eng... but its not a APS-C / Super35 look camera..by any means.

Wednesday, June 20, 2012

Sometimes you do what you have to in order to get a great shot. In this case I was grabbing a shot of the bus carrying 19 WW2 vets to the airport on the start of their trip to Pearl Harbor. I'm shooting with a AF100 with Nikon 14-24 lens mounted. Yes the camera is secured to me, and I'm secure to the vehicle. Safety first, always when doing something like this. I got several really great wide and close shots that where steady. It was fun to do to say the least.

Coming up are a couple of product reviews and a lot more about the shoot I just did. Just got home today and I need to time to warm up the keyboard and write it all up !

Tuesday, February 28, 2012

All right, show #4 is done and live. In this show we'll take a look at what it takes to set up a Resolve system. We'll ook at the various configs you can operate with and their level of performance from simple to insane.

Friday, November 25, 2011

Ok, Paul Simon aside, mounting a GoPro can often take some ingenuity as I did on this recent shoot. When you can't suction cup or adhesive mount it, you have to come up with some better like this.

The maffer clamp is connected to the 5/8 pin swiped from a scissor clip thats holding a Norms grip head thats connected to the baby plate which has a GoPro mount actually screwed into it.

The adhesive on the GoPro mount wouldn't stick to the chrome on the baby plate, so I drilled and counter sunk a small hole to use a machine screw to hold it on. It was sure nice this location we were shooting in had a small machine shop to make this to easy !

Once I had this all together I left the GoPro shooting stills in time-lapse mode for… well, I can't tell you except it might maybe wind up in TV soon !

Monday, October 31, 2011

If you have been reading this site for a while, you'll know trying to find a LCD panel with accurate color has been a challenge.

I now have had some success with getting the Asus to a more neutral color cast. I'll be sharing that over the next week or two. I've also got a recipe now for calibrating panels with the SpyderElite3 that seems to work better. Datacolor should pay me for this one !

Last but not least, I have a new 42" LG LED panel here which I may really like. So far, so good.

On a personal note, I know I've not been posting as much as I'd like, and maybe everyone has been expecting. To say the least I've been through a lot of personal issues with one of my teenage sons. If you knew what I'd been through, you'd be amazed I've been posting anything at all. At some point I may share more, and maybe even turn what I have been thru into a project itself. I will say things are better right now, and hopefully will continue on that track.

Friday, September 09, 2011

I just spent the last 2 days in Green Bay shooting the NFL season opener. Celeb interviews, concert coverage, 2 days with Ross from E! News and Tonite Show Fame. Shot on EX3 which was nice to use a real video cam for a change ! Fed sateliteuplink trunk off the camera. I thru in a GoPro for some extra shots. Long days, but the warmest Packers Game you'll ever be at !

Monday, August 01, 2011

So you know how this story goes. You get a call that starts with " So what are you doing tomorrow ? " and ends with " Great, so see you at some time at some place tomorrow."

That was my story sunday, and today I was doing sound for a network feed with a very well know politician. Its always interesting to get to meet people like this, especially in unexpected places. While I may not always agree with some people's politics, Newt actually thanked us after the shoot for coming out, and was even nice enough to hold the door for me as I wheeled out my gear cart. That was classy for him to do.

Wednesday, July 13, 2011

Just getting stuff done this week. I've been getting ready to move the office, so its been cleaning stuff out, getting close to 200 video clips compressed and delivered, and I've got some video reviews being shot. I should have a couple of really solid reviews on some gear that I use every week, so stay tuned.

I also got a nVidia / PNYQuadro 4000 mac version video card installed this week too. So far, freaking amazing ! Finally a first class video card that doesn't cost as much as the machine it goes into.

Wednesday, June 01, 2011

Red is the problem for me. It seems other colors aren't so bad, but looking at screens, red on one is orange on the other. I'm thinking maybe this gradient chart might do folks better. I should make up a complete set of mix and match gradients to see how monitors are really reproducing color. When you have plain old bars up, even when you do see a difference, its often far greater in a real picture. So I have my work for tomorrow to be sure.

Friday, March 04, 2011

I just spent a few days working in Madison WI covering protests, so I've been slacking off a bit with posts this week but I think I'm allowed when doing 12 hour days getting up at 5AM.

Here is a shot of me doing sound. Special thanks to Chris Hibben for getting me on this job, and taking the shot.

Its been interesting being a fly on the wall and having a small part in this historic event. Yes some of the protesters have been in the building for at least a few days, and it was getting a bit smelly in there. The insides of the capitol building are totally covered in signs, some from pretty far off places in support of the people here.

This is a time lapse I shot on a GoPro HD with LCD screen. I used a panavise suction cup base with ball head on the polished stone railing just about the center of the building. This is about 4 hrs condensed into 15 secs ending where they got into a big circle to channel energy.

Friday, December 17, 2010

Thursday, December 16, 2010

I am working on a huge large AE project right now that is very CPU intense. After some research, I decided on a i7iMac. The price was right, 16gb of ram was cheap, it was fast, and the 27 2556X1440 screen is amazing. I could render on one machine while working on the other. This machine is slightly faster then my 8 core tower, the extra large screen made AE faster and easier to use so I was happy. Two days after I got it, it started just shutting down. No warning, just shut off like the power...

Monday, December 13, 2010

It must be that time of the year ! Magic Lantern has release an pre-ALPHA build of their latest efforts. The big deal : on screen audio meters and manual control. They are making good on their feature set list. This makes the 550D a much more interesting camera. Check it out here. I'm not responsible for you messing up your camera, ect.

After messing around with it, it does appear to work. However, the build I pulled had no ML menus so I had nothing to play with. It was interesting to see those audio meters though :) ML seems to turn off the built in mic, so I had no quick check. Its pretty geeky, I did crash it out once, it requires loading everytime you start the camera up, as far as I can tell. Maybe my card isn't set to auto boot the right way. No sure, docs are thin. Try it.

Tuesday, December 07, 2010

Well I said there was a lot going on this week, didn't I ? Matrox has released new drivers for the MXO2 series products including compress HD. Whats new ? Premiere Pro CS5 support, VeturaCapture app, the Matrox Mpeg2 I Frame codecs for mac ! __________________________ Matrox Vetura Capture lets users quickly and easily capture QuickTime files using popular codecs installed on their editing systems. Users of Adobe Premiere Pro CS5 can capture to the Matrox MPEG2 I-frame full raster (1920...

Monday, December 06, 2010

After not much having gone on in a long time, Magic Lantern has just put out a new firmware update for the 5DmkIII. Click on the link to check it out. That said, your going to need faster CF cards to make this work. However, unlike some camera with bit rates that were too low, this update might not buy you much if anything. Try it and see, I'm not responsible for you trashing your camera. I don't have a 5D to try this on, so anyone out there feel free to do it and let me know ! I told you there were things coming this week :)

Thursday, December 02, 2010

No delivered product, years late. Today RED posted about a revamped Scarlet being called the EPIC mini. Read it here with pic.

Me ? I'm yawning. Who cares how great your specs are if you can't deliver a product, almost regardless of price. Now they did show off a pic of what is supposed to be a working prototype. Its supposed to have better specs then the original RED, thats great. It'll probably be much better then shooting on a current model dslr. When can I buy one ? who knows... in which case it doesn't matter. Of course the fanboys generated 42+ pages on the RED forum in their frenzy. Skip the hype, ship the product, if you can.

Wednesday, December 01, 2010

Canon also put out a 7D firmware update V1.2.3. Get the update here No new features, but bug fixes which include : Fixes a phenomenon in which the settings of the Speedlite Transmitter ST-E2 revert to the default settings when both the camera and the ST-E2 are set to auto power off. Fixes a phenomenon in which the Macro Ring Lite (MR-14EX, MT24-EX) and slave flashes do not sync while shooting wirelessly. Firmware version 1.2.3 is for cameras with firmware up to Version 1.2.2. If the camera's...

Canon quietly put out a firmware update today for the 550D / t2i. it address image jumps when using picture optimization. I've personally seen this when doing rack focus with some manual lenses, so its worth doing. Get the firmware update here

as always, follow the directions carefully ! no new features added, but a good fix.

Tuesday, November 30, 2010

was one of the first NLE's on the scene, and has stood the test of time. Its not a household name in NLE's for most folks, yet its been used to cut hundreds of hollywood features including recent ones. It really got a lot of its fame from having moviola type hardware interface back in the day. Thats long gone, its evolved and grown. Its now also open source. Unlike other open source NLE's which are often bad iMovie knockoffs, this is the real deal, an NLE with 20 years of service.

You can get the free XP 32 / Vista 32 / Win 7 32 & 64 version online with registration here.. OS X and Linux versions coming soon. Also dig that they are supporting Matrox Video I/O hardware out of the box, Decklink and DVS to follow.

Tuesday, November 02, 2010

I finally got that music video done ! here is an SD version peak on Vimeo. I'll have an HD version next week, and maybe some behind the scenes video as well.

Some quick details : this was shot mainly on my 550D + Tamron 17-50 2.8, the magnificent Tamron 70-200 2.8, Vivitar 28 1.9, OM 50 1.4 and Vivitar 400 5.6. I also have a bunch of shots in there done on one of my GoPro HD's as well - can you guess which shots they are ?

How about some interesitng news ? Adobe is getting into the HTML5 game seriously. This isn't about giving up on flash, but covering their bets. They know HTML5 will be the new standard and their tools have to be ready to produce content for it. Reality is, dreamweaver it the biggest tool in use for web creation. I'm not saying there aren't other options out there, but since they killed GoLive, there really isn't much choice. Yes there are some MUCH smaller commercial products, but all combined are probably 1-2% of the entire market. Welcome news to say the least as we have been gearing up HTML5 based pages here for projects.

Monday, October 25, 2010

I know I have been a little lax with posting the last week or so. I've been busy editing away on that music video, as well as some other projects. Have no fear that Canon 100 2.8 Macro lens test video is _also_ being edited as I type this.

Meanwhile, I did take the weekend off, but managed some time in my kayak to snap this shot. You can click on the image for a full size version, taken again on my iPhone. That all goes to prove with a good eye, some skills and a little talent you can make a great image with anything. It was created by stitching together about 5 shots and using photoshop magic ( ok, hard work ! ) to put it together. While I had been tempted to color correct this brighter, this is in fact pretty close to what it really looked like. I found that "correcting" it made it loose some of its magic, so I pretty much left it alone.

Wednesday, October 13, 2010

After Effects Used to conform The Social Network.

We knew it was coming - desktop tools eating away at the established and expensive ones. This trend has been on for a while to get away from the old outdated workflows that have permeated hollywood for the last 20 years of NLE editing. Here is a great video interview with the director on it

More then ever, the cost of the tools to make a hollywood grade feature are within reach of anyone serious about making a movie. However, you still need a great script ( it makes sense, not too long, won't require $200M to make, has at least one likable character ) and actors who can carry it off.

Monday, October 04, 2010

I shot a music video this past weekend.

It was a long 15hr day with nite exteriors shot in the cold. How cold ? well the light stands had frost on them when we packed it up.

I worked just about every lens in my collection on this, including one I haven't talked about, a Vivitar 400 5.6. What a great piece of big heavy glass. Its an amazing lens when you factor in the 1.6 APS-C crop factor yielding 600mm, still at 5.6. You can spend something like $6k for the L version, or have this fine thing for less then the sales tax or shipping on that other one. Guess which one gets my vote ! I also pulled out my GoPro HD for some shots.

The real lens that gave me some really great shots was the Tamron 70-200 2.8. This is just an amazing lens because if focuses to what most folks would consider macro range. Well enough for now... back to editing.

Vivitar ( Tokina made ) 400mm 5.6, DoF is next to nothing even at 400-500ft and F11. If you think you are good with focus, wait until you try this lens.

This shot came from my Tamron 17-50 2.8.

I got my first rough cut done tonight, and so far it looks amazing. Hopefully by the end of the week I"ll have it done and out.

Thursday, September 09, 2010

The Production Landscape Is Changing.

Over the last week or so there have been a series of what seemed, unrelated announcements, each interesting on their own. One of them was that the BBC was giving some level of approval for using dslr shot material. Adobe released Premiere Pro 5.0.2 a few days ago. Today, Adobe announced that the BBC was putting 2,000 seats of Premiere Pro in, its now their official NLE. Press Release

What does this mean ? well besides the fact that Adobe got a very nice sale done here, its a very high visibility announcement. I think it goes to say, if you make a great product, people will buy it and use it. Given the BBC will let dslr shot material into productions now, and Premiere Pro natively edits h.264 based formats, its a pretty simply decision. I also think this deal gives Prem Pro much more serious street cred with producers too because if its good enough for the ultra picky BBC, its got to be good enough for me. Time will tell how this plays out.

Tuesday, September 07, 2010

Sometimes you just have to be there.

I got his shot across the street from my office. A real double rainbow. Its a series of iphone pix stitched together since this was a really wide shot. Thats right, I've got a 5K image off an iphone :) When it starting raining while the sun was out, I went out the front of the building expecting to see something, but this was a surprise to be sure.

Friday, July 16, 2010

Good Morning, Good Day, Good Evening,

From where ever are you have found me ! My goal on this site is simple : to provide you with worthwhile information and reviews on gear, software, or whatever else is on mind my. I won't waste your time telling you about the groceries I bought ( unless it was REALLY a deal :) ! ) but I will tell you about how gear performs in the real world. Shoot all the test charts you want. Its not that useful information can't be had from them, but the question is how does it relate to actual images you can produce in the real world. I forever hear about people complaining about chromatic aberrations in lenses. I don't think the issue is so much that they are there, its just that people have learned what they are and how to see them. In the past it would of simply of been part of a lens's look, good or bad.

I'm not hung up about a perfect lens. In fact it might really be that very imperfect vintage lens with really strong CA that makes wonderful images.... in the right hands, understanding how to make a weak point strong. Beauty in the eye of the beholder !

Would this image be more interesting without the flare ? probably not. Taken with iPhone 3GS

So I'm going to try to provide as much real world hands on testing of things as I can. Expect anything and everything from audio to cameras to the latest software. I'll be honest about it, the good and the bad. With that I'm starting this site with 2 reviews on audio gear.

Also understand this site is a work in progress, like any good site. At some point, you just have to go, so expect cosmetic fixes to happen over the next few weeks.

Thanks for stopping by, see you out there, and don't be afraid to say hello and let me know what you are thinking !